Friday, May 29, 2015

Green Valley resident lists worries about America

I’m an older guy. I love this nation, this state. But sometimes I have sincere concerns about us, about what defines us, about some of the directions we’re headed.

I worry that my country is the biggest producer/provider/seller of military weapons in the world. And then, in awful irony, they have been/are being used against us.

I grieve for the horrific numbers of former military people who commit suicide daily. I don’t understand how we can send our citizens to war and then not give them the excellent care they deserve when they come back home emotionally and physically scarred.

I don’t understand why so many influential people don’t acknowledge the clear signs of climate change: earlier migrations, earlier flower blooming, rapidly melting polar ice, low-lying islands in danger of disappearing. I don’t understand why some politicians who could help won’t even use the term.

I don’t understand that, given the clear evidence of the economic disparity between the rich and the rest, politicians only talk; they don’t act.